Breathe No More
by BlackOpal
Summary: Satine sits up one night, battling her deadly coughs away from Christian's bedside. Through a song, she musters up all of her feelings and lets them go.


Disclaimer: Only the story is mine. Baz gets to have Moulin Rouge and er.. Evanescence sings "Breathe No More", which is a brilliant song.  
  
Masses of red hair peaked out from under a quilt. Sobs also filtered out from under the blanket and it became evident that Satine was hiding under the comforter, savoring its protection from the outer world. She was sitting on the worn out mattress staring with glassed eyes at Christian. Occasionally, her cream white finger reached out to wipe a tear from her face in order to keep it falling onto the skin of her love. Her face was broken and covered in sweat. One would think she had woken up from a horrid dream, but it was not to be so.  
  
The moment she let lose a chain of deathly sounding coughs, you knew this was the reason she was not sleeping. Shuddering, she raised her hand to keep the blood from spilling out but realized it was an impossible task. She staggered to the small sink in the bathroom, spitting the poisonous red liquid onto the ceramic sink. Water, she thought as she gasped for precious air, she needed water. There was a glass of water besides the bed, one of Christian's silly boyhood habits and greedily, she gulped it down. The fit had stopped but the effects of it still loomed inside of Satine's body. It was cold and cruel. It was death.  
  
Satine was dying. No one had told her. It was not necessary for her to realize when her own death was coming. And she didn't want to die. She wanted to stay with Christian forever.  
  
She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was mused up to a point where it had decided it will never be fixed, her eyes were bloodshot and her mouth was outlined in blood. She peered closer, raised her fist and smashed the mirror.  
  
"I've been looking in the mirror so long," she sang to the frame, "that I've come to believe my soul's on the other side."  
  
And it was true wasn't it? Who says she has to die? Who says she has to leave behind the only thing that's dear to her? No one. She can stay here. She would stay here.  
  
"Oh the little pieces falling, shatter." Thousands of herself peered from around her. The pieces of the mirror had cluttered together, forming an army against her bare feet.  
  
Carefully stepping over the bits and pieces to get to the window. She suddenly felt so cooped up in here. In her haste, she stepped on a slice of glass that entered her foot and made it bleed. Cursing, she picked it off of her heel and wiped the blood off with it. She examined the bit in her hands. It looked so innocent, very unworthy of being able to tear up the bottom of her foot.  
  
"Shards of me, to sharp to put back together, to small to matter, but big enough to cut me into so many little pieces."  
  
She knelt to pick up the slivers of glass before Christian woke up. She could take the pain of the shattered glass but she didn't want her love to have to endure it. As her fingers brushed against a large piece, she saw herself, her scared and frustrated eyes peering back at her. Blood was still flowing from the corner of her mouth, still unhealed from the fit she had only minutes before. Her fingers stroked the blood on the mirror without her consent, as if hoping to make it disappear. It did not. It only blurred from the effect of her sweating touch.  
  
"If I try to touch her, and I bleed, I bleed, and I breathe, I breathe no more." Frustrated, she took her fist and again smashed glass. It didn't break. She tried again, and again, each time more desperate to get rid of the reminder of her looming death.  
  
"Lie to me," she begged the mirror, "convince me that I've been sick forever and all of this, will make sense when I get better." Her unblinking reflection stared up at her and she continued pleading for her case. "I know the difference, between myself and my reflection. I just can't help but to wonder," and with a look to Christian she quietly sang, "Which of us do you love?" It was an unfair question. Christian truly loved Satine, inside and out. But when she died. could he deal with just looking at pictures? Looking at her reflection?  
  
Her thoughts were cut off by a sharp intake of breath and the drawn taste of blood. It was coming again, another fit, eager to take her over. It filled her lungs and ate away her draining health. And when it fled. Satine was left feeling weak and helpless.  
  
"So I bleed, I bleed, and I breathe, I breathe now... Bleed, I bleed, and I breathe, I breathe, I breathe- I breathe no more." And gasping for breath, she made her way over to the bed where she would fade into the dream world once again. 


End file.
